Pussy Riot a great kickstart for HBO's summer documentary series

The Sun's David Zurawik talks about HBO's summer documentary series, on WYPR FM's 'Take on Television.'

The Sun's David Zurawik talks about HBO's summer documentary series, on WYPR FM's 'Take on Television.'

David ZurawikThe Baltimore Sun

One of the delights of summer is the HBO documentary series executive producer Sheila Nevins delivers.

I have only seen the first two films this year, but I like them both.

I love "Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer," which launches the series at 9 tonight. It's a look inside the feminist Russian art collective, its "Punk Prayer" protest in a Moscow cathedral and the trial that followed.

The film reminded me as nothing else has in the last 40 some years what it felt like to be 18 years old in 1968 and hear the siren call of a cultural revolution. It also helped me understand and appreciate the energy, ethos and desperation of punk as nothing in America ever has.

Here's a podcast with a preview of "Pussy Riot" as well as a look at the second film in the series, "Love, Marilyn," a 50th anniversary meditation on Marilyn Monroe, that airs at 9 p.m. on June 17.

I swore I never wanted to read or see another thing on Marilyn Monroe, but this documentary by Liz Garbus avoids all the sexual longing and goes for some of the clearest explaining I have encountered of what made her so popular.